Helle Dal, a senior fellow in public diplomacy studies at the Heritage Foundation, has a few provocative comments over at NRO's The Corner about how China is "making friends and influencing people" in the U.S. and far afield. While American diplomacy seems to stand for timidity, remorse and an irrational retreat from hegemony, China is feeling strong and aggressive.And it's successfully selling this new image all around the world. Writes Dal,
This October is the tenth anniversary of President Clinton’s signing the agreement to give China permanent normal trade relations. Now, as the United States faces a potential double-dip recession, China continues to maintain strong economic growth. The Chinese believe they are winning — that Western capitalism and culture will ultimately fall short of their own model. Many Westerners implicitly believe this too and are convinced that the next decade will be China’s.
Today I have a new article [here in World Affairs Journal] that delves into another way that China is beating the United States: public diplomacy. This fight is one that we are voluntarily losing.
The Chinese have invested heavily in making friends and influencing competitors. China has opened 60 cultural centers (called Confucius Institutes) at American universities. The U.S. has nothing comparable in China. China uses its version of the Peace Corps to influence developing countries such as Laos, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. Their diplomats stay in their posts far longer than the U.S. average, which is two years, and their students are studying abroad in ever increasing numbers. China is developing a widespread, highly sophisticated influence machine to demonstrate that Chinese state capitalism is the way of the future.
We may be dealing with our share of other difficulties, but we cannot ignore the aggressive game being play by our “permanently normal” trading partner.
